Starbringer
by Sorge
Summary: For the all-clone crew of the RAS Aggressor, it's just a mission gone badly awry. But for the embattled people of Middle Earth, the appearance of these strange white-armoured warriors from the stars could be a new hope for salvation in the bloody war against the Dark Lord.
1. Don't Disturb Me

The sound of thunder jarred Captain Everett awake. He opened his eyes and saw a bare metal surface that gleamed dully in the half-light of a shipboard night-time. The thunder was gone. There was just the soft hum of computers and vents to tell him where he was. Home. These were his private quarters aboard the Republic assault ship _Agressor_ ; a sterile metal box hardly eight feet across with a bed and a chair. It was one of only three like it aboard the sprawling Liberator-class assault ship. Such privacy was a luxury aboard the city-sized vessel, home to thousands of clones living shoulder-to-shoulder.

The sound came again. Someone was knocking at the door. A glance at the chrono showed that only thirty minutes had elapsed since he'd laid his head on the pillow. Better than nothing.

Blearily, he rolled over and sat up on the steel pull-down cot that doubled as his desk. He tapped the wall-mounted control panel to bring the lights up and winced. Even the soft white illumination provided by the floor-to-ceiling luma panels was painful to his tired eyes. He was a first-generation clone officer, and he was beginning to feel the weight of his accelerated aging process. He rubbed his eyes and sat up straighter.

"Come!" he ordered.

Another clone officer appeared in the doorway. He wore no armor, and of course he shared the Captain's face. Even so, Everett immediately recognized his second-in-command, the _Agressor's_ Executive Officer: a reliable clone who'd drawn the moniker 'Exo' as a matter of course.

"When I said I didn't want to be disturbed, I meant it," Everett said wearily. "What is it?"

"Apologies, sir," the Lieutenant Commander replied briskly. "I didn't want to wake you, but we've had an event."

Everett noticed the tight lines of worry around his friend's eyes and began to feel a little worried himself. An 'event' aboard a starship was never a good thing. It suggested a deviation from the nice, orderly sequence of things that was the gold standard for every command.

"Who's got the conn?"

"CT-4349—Conner, sir."

"Fine. Give it to me."

"Just listen for a minute."

Everett cocked his head quizzically, but he respected his XO's opinion He listened, wondering what he was supposed to be attuning to. At first, he heard nothing at all, but the answer quickly dawned on him: it wasn't a sound he heard, but rather, the absence of a sound. The thrum of the hyperdrive that had rocked him to sleep was gone, replaced by the low rumble of sublight engines.

"We've dropped out of hyperspace," he said, puzzled. "Why? We're not due to hit Muunil Space for another..." He discretely checked his chrono. "Six hours. Why did we drop out?"

Exo's face darkened. "Can't say. Long-range sensors picked up a significant gravity mass in our path and the navicomp dropped us out automatically."

Both clones shared a knowing glance. Hyperspace travel, for all its convenience, was still not fully understood. The void was not empty. Asteroids and other pieces of celestial junk—some of them planet-sized—sometimes got 'stuck' in the other dimension, for unknown reasons, posing hazards to passing ships. The advent of astronav software helped somewhat. It tried to steer travellers through 'safe' lanes, but it was an awfully big galaxy. You could hardly catalogue every navigational hazard, but still...

"There shouldn't be any obstructions in this lane!" Everett groused. "We're in a Corsec-endorsed shipping lane for force's sake." He rubbed his temples. Something was bothering him. "How long ago did you pick up the mass shadow?"

"About ten minutes ago, sir," Exo said, glancing at his chrono.

"And you waited until now to tell me?" Everett suddenly felt wide-awake. He wasn't a Jedi, but he didn't need the force to have a bad feeling.

"Yes, sir. You specifically asked not to be disturbed," Exo said unflinchingly. He was perhaps the only clone aboard who could get away with talking to the Captain this way, and he knew it. He was also a professional, and he didn't like to be told his job, even by his CO.

"Shabuir! I know what I said!" Everett snapped. He pinched the bridge of his nose for a second. "Sorry. How about our scanners? Did you do multi-freq sweep?"

"That was the first thing we did once we dropped out," the XO said reasonably. "Nothing but noise. There's a big dead star in the next system. It's throwing off a lot of radioactive material and playing hell with our scanners."

"Radiation? Are we okay?"

"No problem. Our particle shields are intercepting the worst of it. But no spacewalks."

"Are you sure we're alone out here?" Everett felt less than consoled. Rather than subsiding, the bad feeling was still gnawing at him.

"I wish I could say that with certainty, but with our sensors blind, it's hard to be sure. We're doing the best we can, sir."

"You're doing fine, Exo." He sighed. Sleep would have to wait. For now there was a problem to solve and a whole division that needed to be moved to keep to a very strict timetable. "Got any ideas?"

"Actually, sir, I was thinking—do you remember what happened to the _Prosecutor_?"

Everett stiffened. The story of what had befallen the RAS _Prosecutor_ and her crew was a space story gruesome enough to send a shiver down the most hardened sailor's spine.

"Yeah." He shook his head, remembering something. "'Gravitational anomaly, exited hyperspace automatically,' he said, quoting the _Prosecutor's_ much-publicized final log entry. "Stang, that was right near here, wasn't it?"

Exo nodded. "Yeah, it was."

"Dead in space, sensors out... smells like a setup."

"Sure as hell."

Both clones stared at each other for a long second. It was Exo who broke the silence. "Sir? How do you want to play this one?"

"I don't know yet. Could be nothing, could be something. Better safe than sorry." He paused a moment, stroking his chin as he thought. He needed to shave. The stubble there cut like sandpaper. "Action stations," he decided. "Go to general quarters. Deep sector scans at two minute intervals and jump to hyperspace the moment we're ready."

The XO nodded and raised his wrist-mounted comlink to relay the necessary orders. Before he transmitted, he raised the question: "Sir? What should I tell the scanner crews to look for?"

Everett narrowed his eyes as he reached for a uniform undershirt.

"I don't know yet. Possibly Trandoshans. Big scaly barves in tin cans."

As if on cue, the overhead lights flickered. The ship shuddered almost imperceptibly. Everett's head jerked around. He'd been in command long enough to recognize what that meant.

"Turbolasers?"

The walls shuddered by way of response.

"That's us," Exo noted tersely. "We're firing." He raised his comlink. "Executive Officer to the bridge. What's happening?"

Before there was time for an answer, a powerful explosion rocked the ship. Both clones were thrown to the deck. A moment later, decompression alarms began to sound.

"Kriff!" Everett cursed and slammed his fist against the bulkhead. "Something hit us!"

Exo got to his feet without comment. He grabbed his Captain by the arm and helped him up.

"Come on, sir. We've got to get to the bridge."

"Thank you, Exo," Everett muttered, pulling on his gray Navy uniform in a hurry. He held out his hand and motioned vigorously. "Comlink!" He felt a hard cylinder slap into his palm and keyed the intercom. "This is the Captain speaking." His voice reverberated through the ship from a warren of overhead speakers. "High alert. All hands to battle stations. Stand by to repel boarders." Almost as an afterthought, and quite unnecessarily, he added: "This is not a drill."

"They'll understand that, sir," Exo commented dryly.

"Watch us!" was Everett's snarled reply.

Exo duly complied, drawing his blaster and moving to stand in the door. Outside, clone troopers and officers in various states of undress were sprinting past to reach their action stations. From another part of the ship, he could hear the sound of blasterfire. The battle was underway.

Exo looked left then right, making sure that the corridor was clear. Amidst the staccato mix of DC-15 fire and the shouts of clone officers, he heard the louder, fuller-bodied bang of slugthrowers. No republic soldier would ever be so-armed, and he rightly guessed he must be hearing the return fire of boarders. More urgently, the sounds of battle were much closer than he was comfortable with.

"Sir!" he shouted, turning back to the Captain's quarters with the intent to secure him, willing or not. "Sir, we have to go!"

"I know, Exo!" Everett shouted, appearing in the doorway with his coat buttons half-undone.

Another explosion rocked the Agressor. The lights flickered. Renewed gunfire echoed up the corridor. A stray slug skipped off the wall, fired from an unknown distance but clearly from close enough to retain its potency.

"Sir, stay put!" Exo shouted. "I'm calling for a security squad!"

Everett looked around and realized that the battle was moving rapidly. It could overtake them in minutes—far too long to wait for a security detail to reach them.

"Forget it," Everett grunted. "We're not in a position to wait. You've got your blaster, haven't you?"

"Yes sir," Exo said, somewhat doubtfully. He had his standard-issue DC-17s sidearm, but neither trooper was wearing armor and he didn't want to shoot it out with a spiced-out Trandoshan merc in only his dress uniform if he could help it. But the Captain's orders carried weight, like it or not. He nodded dourly. "Copy that, sir."

"Then lead the way! We're going to be needed on the bridge! Go!"

Exo needed little urging. "Copy that! But stay behind me!"

"Not a problem," Everett muttered, wishing he had a blaster of his own. He was suddenly acutely aware of just how many deserted lengths of corridor lay between his cabin and the command bridge. It was a very long way to run...

But they had to go. Staying put until the battle overtook them was not an option. Trailing his XO by a few paces, Everett kept up as they sprinted through the red-lit corridors. Their progress was halted at every intersection as Exo went ahead to clear the way. He held his blaster out in front of him like a pro, checking every corner and shadowed recess for hidden dangers, moving fluidly and taking advantage of cover.

Everett couldn't help but admire the man's skill. He hadn't touched the handle of a DC himself since Kamino. Could he even still use a weapon? He made a mental note to see the rangemaster about re-qualifying for a blaster as soon as this was over. He saw now that it was a proficiency that he couldn't afford to relax.

"Exo," he hissed, crouching behind his friend as they slid around a blind corner.

"What is it, sir?" Exo replied shortly, evidently focused on the task.

"Never mind," Everett apologized, glancing over his shoulder. He'd meant to ask the clone what his previous duty station had been, and where he'd learned to clear rooms like a galactic marine, but he realized it was the kind of question a shiny-white asked his Sergeant, not a fitting question among officers. He could always look it up in the clone's file later.

Suddenly, Exo halted in his tracks. "Stang," he muttered.

Everett was obliged to stop or run his XO over. He drew up alongside the other clone to see what he was looking at.

It was a clone trooper in armor, fallen defending his post. Everett didn't need a medic to tell that the man was dead—the fist-sized entry hole in the center of his helmet was proof enough of that. His DC-15 was still clutched tightly in his hand.

Everett warily took the blaster, conscious of the fact that a dead trooper here meant that the enemy was perilously near the bridge. He took a careful look around, making sure that no one else was lurking in the room with them. There was something wrong with the way one of the overhead vents was hanging...

"Exo!" he shouted, struggling to bring up his blaster just as a very large Trandoshan dropped down from the ceiling with a wild howl. It towered over Everett, raising a wickedly-curved knife. But Exo was faster. His pistol came up and he shot the reptilian alien in the face while Everett was still fumbling with his safety.

"Works better if you take the safety off, sir!" Exo growled, dropping to one knee with his pistol leveled back the way they'd come.

"Stang! I kriffing know!" Everett roared, suddenly feeling very much like a proper sailor. There was danger now, and he found it almost... exhilarating. It was in his blood. This was what a Clone was made for.

Two more Trandoshans came around the corner at a run. There was no cover in the hall and the clone officers were obliged to shoot it out. Both of the invaders fell under the onslaught, too surprised at the sudden resistance to return fire effectively. Mercifully, neither clone was hit.

"Damn lizards!" Exo shouted. "Let's go!"

He grabbed the Captain by the shoulders and bundled him through the corridors, heedless of the battle raging all around.

"With all due respect, move it sir!" he shouted, popping a few shots over his shoulder to discourage pursuers.

Everett didn't need to be told twice. Clutching his blaster rifle to his chest, he ran like a jackrab, sprinting toward the bridge with the speed of a clone two years his younger.

Rounding a corner, he was suddenly greeted by a forest of rifles and figures in white armor. Clone troopers guarding the repulsorlift to the bridge. This section of the ship, at least, was secure. Everett began to breathe again. He hadn't realized how fast his heart had been pounding.

"Sir!" the trooper nearest to him saluted. Everett recognized the man by the green daubs of paint on his shoulder pauldrons. He was a Lieutenant, a clone trooper officer who went by the name of 'Nab,' for some obscure reason. His reputation preceded him: a little over-eager in battle, but generally well-liked by the troops. The decidedly un-regulation Echani vibro-sword he wore at his waist wasn't for show, either.

"Hold the line, Lieutenant," Everett panted. It was all the encouragement he could muster, winded as he was by his sudden sprint.

"Sir, yes sir!" Nab said fearlessly.

The defense seemed to be in capable hands, so Everett left the men to their work. He handed off his rifle to a trooper and shoved his personal code cylinder into the data terminal next to the repulsorlift. The doors slid open, but Exo lingered with the defenders, carrying on a shouted conversation with Nab.

"Exo!" the Captain barked. "Come on!"

"Never mind that, sir!" the XO replied. "I'm needed elsewhere." He grabbed a trooper by his armored chest plate and thrust him onto the circular repulsorlift platform with Everett. "Watch him!" he ordered the trooper. "Wherever he goes, you go!"

"Copy that, sir!" the trooper barked.

Everett tried to protest, but the junior officer either wasn't listening or didn't care. The last thing Everett saw of him was his close-cropped regulation black hair bobbing away through a sea of white helmets. Then the lift doors slammed shut and he was moving, buoyed rapidly upward by the repulsor-powered lift.

Everett almost cursed, angry at having been so casually ignored, but he sensed the trooper watching him. It wouldn't do to set a bad example for the troops. With an effort, Everett composed himself. It was time to get busy doing the things that his pay grade mandated.

The lift stopped rising. The doors parted and he strode onto the bridge. It was a frenzy of activity. Crew members hunched at their stations, poring over data screens. Alarms jangled and data panels flashed bright red warnings. Out the viewscreen, space looked typically serene. But inside, it was another story.

"Captain on deck!" a trooper shouted.

"As you were," Everett replied out of habit. He got a few brisk nods, but nothing more. Everyone on the bridge was utterly focused on the task of fighting the ship. Good. He expected no less from his officers. They were professionals all. The youngest of them was already a veteran of three combat actions.

Everett strode forward along the central catwalk that bisected the sunken crew pits. The deck officer stood at the helm tapping furiously at a datapad. Everett drew closer and saw that he was trying to decrypt an incoming comm transmission by hand with a pull-down cipher on his 'pad.

"Deck officer!" he shouted.

"Sir?" the clone officer replied, looking up from his work. Sweat beaded on his brow.

"Is what you're doing right now important?"

"Sir, it's a republic flash transmission, top priority. Picked it up as soon as we arrived in the system, but it's heavily encrypted." He showed the Captain the contents of his datapad.

His curiosity piqued, Everett glanced over the clone's shoulder and saw the problem immediately. He raised an eyebrow. The transmission was earmarked 'classified', with a level 1 security encryption, the highest that Everett had ever personally seen. In theory, he had the clearance to crack it, but with the battle raging, he didn't have the time.

"Here." He handed off his personal code cylinder. "Let me know the second you're done." Turning, he raised his voice to be heard over the din. "Somebody give me the score!"

"Sir!" the Watch Officer replied. "We've been ambushed by several small cloaked vessels. We engaged and destroyed two ships with our point defenses, but one got through. There's a ship of unknown model docked atop our dorsal superstructure, and it's currently putting down boarders!"

"That'll be our Trandoshans," Everett noted. "Show me."

"Putting the image on-screen now," a crewman confirmed.

The air in the middle of the bridge jumped, and a holo of the unwanted ship appeared. Everett studied it intensely. It was a mass of shoddily-welded metal plates and skeletal protuberances sticking out at ungainly angles.

"Fierfek, that thing's as ugly as they are! Can we jump to hyperspace?"

"Not with that thing sitting there, sir. We'd breach our own hull. Simulations predict catastrophic damage."

Everett cupped his chin in thought.

"Can we shoot it off with our point defenses?"

"Negative. They're under our guns' arc. They knew right where to hit us, sir."

"Information gleaned from the Prosecutor, no doubt," Everett mused darkly. "Damn lizards. Seal the affected sections."

"Sealing sections, aye sir," a crewman replied.

Everett thought he could feel the vibration of blast doors slamming shut, faintly and far away. He hoped that the measure would be enough to stem the tide of Trandoshan invaders and keep the infection from spreading any further. Some troopers would be trapped in the sealed sections, but he knew they could fend for themselves. And he wasn't going to leave them to die.

He motioned for a comlink and used it to hail Lieutenant Nab. The infantry officer's head and torso appeared in holographic form, floating in the air above Everett's hand. From the carnage scattered all around, there had clearly been some fighting.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" Nab asked without a trace of hesitation. There was a jagged crack in his visor where something had struck him, but otherwise, he looked little worse for the wear.

"Are you alright, trooper?" Everett asked, slightly concerned.

"Sir, yes sir!" the clone Lieutenant replied enthusiastically. "Got close and personal with a big knife-wielding barve. Turns out my sword was a little sharper than his was."

"Good work, Lieutenant," Everett commended, a little unnerved. "What's your current situation?"

"We've got this section locked down, sir. All hostiles are dead. Minimal casualties, no KIA."

Everett let out a sigh of relief. No clone troopers had died defending his bridge. And no more would, if he could help it.

"Good. I've got a job for you, then. Get a rifle company together," he ordered. "No soft stuff. Detonators, droid poppers, repeating blasters—everything. Sweep this ship. Kick those Trandoshans back to wherever it is that they came from, copy?"

"Copy that, sir!"

"Get it done, trooper. Over and out."

Remembering what had happened aboard the ill-fated Prosecutor, where Trandoshan slicers had turned the ship's automated defense turrets against her own crew, he turned to a crewman and added: "Deactivate all of our automated security measures and lock out all instrument access from those sections. We don't want them turning those systems against us."

"Aye sir."

The clone in charge of shipboard systems punched in the necessary commands. But as soon as his finger hit the 'enter' key, something happened. It wasn't so much an event as the absence of one. The alarms that had been shrilling away in the background cut out with an electronic squelch. At the same time, every light and data screen on the bridge flickered and went out. The bridge was plunged into total darkness. The emergency lights that should have come on, didn't.

There was a clamor of surprised voices on the suddenly dark bridge. The Captain was just as stunned as anyone, but he recovered quickly.

"Trooper!" he cried, straining his eyes to find the shadowy shape of the clone trooper who'd been following him. "Activate your—."

Before he could even finish, a dazzling beam of white light stabbed out from the clone trooper's built in helmet-lamp, illuminating a wide circle around Everett with cold, clinical light. The din of panicked conversation softened to a murmur as all eyes were drawn to him.

"Everyone stay where you are." Everett ordered. "Give me a damage assessment." He fought to keep his voice level, though a trace of his clone donor's thick Concord Dawn accent crept into his speech. "What just hit us?"

For a few seconds, the question hung in the air totally moot. Crewmembers hammered on keyboards, but not a single effort of theirs was successful in producing a response from the dead screens that now hung silently around the bridge.

Everett just about lost his temper.

"Somebody go get a kriffing datapad! Our systems are clearly out!"

"Stang, that was a backdoor attack!" the Chief Engineer exclaimed suddenly from across the bridge. He was a clone who preferred to wear his heavily-modified armor, even on the bridge, and it had a built-in uplink/downlink array for direct interface with the ship's systems. "Sorry, sir," he amended more quietly, catching the Captain's accusing glare. "I don't think anything hit us. That was a data bomb, or I'm a Sith. Nasty bit of malware: I bet they sliced into a data terminal and got into the control core somehow."

"Say that again, Chang" Everett demanded, using the lingo term for the Clone's position. He was a little unnerved by the implication. "What did they get at?"

"It's impossible to say," the engineer replied breathlessly. He scrolled rapidly through a glut of ever-multiplying figures on his datapad. "Looks like they're re-writing our security protocols as we speak. Sir, they're locking us out."

"What does that mean, trooper? Are you telling me that this isn't our ship anymore?"

Everybody was watching the exchange now. It was so quiet on the bridge that they could hear the thumps of pebble-sized micrometeors pinging off the hull mingled with the sound of distant blasterfire.

"It's not that bad yet sir," the engineer said quickly, fingers flying over the keys. "Right now they're on the wrong side of about a dozen firewalls. It'll take time for them to burn through."

"Can you stop them?" Everett demanded, aware even then that he was asking an unfair question.

"Sir..." The Chief Engineer faltered. "Maybe. With a whole team of engineers. And we need computing power—lots of it. And we don't have that!" He waved to the dark monitors around him in frustration.

Everett fought down his own rising panic, conscious of his need to project a confident face for his crew. "If they do get through, what happens? What could they do?"

"They could do anything we can," the engineer replied. "Power off our shields. Shut off the life support. Kill the reactors, maybe. They could vent the ship's atmosphere or even trigger the self-destruct charges and scuttle us from a distance." He looked up with a pained expression. "It's bad, sir."

"How long?" Everett wanted to know.

The Chief Engineer just stared at his datapad numbly.

"How long, Chief?" Everett demanded again. "Give me an estimate!"

Suddenly, a resourceful trooper who had found a pair of macrobinoulars and was using them to manually survey the horizon, interrupted.

"Sir! We've got separatist ships arriving in-system! Two Trade Federation cruisers and a droid control ship!"

"What?" the Captain's mouth went dry. This was starting to feel like a well-orchestrated takeover. Was this how the Prosecutor had bought it? "Shields up!" he commanded. "Turn us around to face the incoming ships!"

"Sir, navigation controls are offline!" the Deck officer shouted.

"Turbolasers?"

"Offline! We're dead in space, sir!"

"Orders, sir?" the helmsman piped up. "Are we fighting or running?"

"Sir!" the observer cried again, "Separatist ships are launching fighters!"

Everett blinked heavily. His mind was racing. Just this once, he wished he had a Jedi officer on the bridge of the Aggressor to see through this mess with their force sense now that all his instruments were dead. But this was a third-line garrison-keeping ship, and the Jedi Order's supply of combat-experienced Knights was finite. They would just have to get by without the force this time.

 _Though if the force was with us today, that'd be useful_ , Everett thought. Now he had to figure out how to fight off a Separatist fleet without a ship of his own. He suddenly realized that the whole bridge crew was watching him, waiting for his orders. There was no more time for deliberation. Everett straightened his shoulders and started issuing commands, even though he knew it was ultimately futile.

"Everyone, calm down. Flight control: standby for emergency maneuvers." There was a direct hydraulic line from the bridge that would manually activate the Agressor's chemical docking thrusters and allow for some steering. He turned to the trooper who had been serving as his bodyguard, now fidgeting uncertainly without a role to play.

"You! Contact your Sergeant. Tell him to get a fireteam together and standby to escort engineering personnel to the engine room." He spun and jabbed his finger at the clone Navigator. "We're going to jump to hyperspace manually. I want a vector out of here now! Put it on a flash card if you have to! I want us jumped!" He cleared his throat, and looked around for an infantry officer. There wasn't one. He dialed Nab.

"Sir?" the beleaguered Lieutenant asked breathlessly.

"Lieutenant, open your field directory to contingency plan 'Cresh-two'. We're expecting boarders."

Nab looked a little perplexed, but he nodded gamely.

" _Ah_ —roger that, sir."

Everett went back to hashing out desperate preparations. The basis of his plan was to preserve the Aggressor as a republic-held vessel long enough for a maintenance team to fire the hyperdrive manually from the engine room and bug out of this system. Doing that might involve treating the ship as an infantry action, trading sections for time, or even destroying parts of the vessel with explosives to deny the enemy access to vital systems. He didn't want to do that, but he didn't see any other options. It was all out of the training manuals: earmarked for only the most dire of circumstances.

He'd dropped all his heavy fighters off at Rothana. The ship's remaining V-19 Torrent contingent could be deployed to run screening actions against incoming enemy dropships, but they would almost certainly doom themselves against the endless waves of droid starfighters that would follow.

And of course, even if the Aggressor had enough blasters in her armories to arm even a third of her crew, it would be a costly strategy. Thousands of clones would die. And that would only work until the invading Separatists got tired of clone-inflicted casualties and simply opted to scuttle the ship with their turbolasers instead. But he couldn't see any other way out of it, and surrender was out of the question.

Then it seemed that the force itself saw fit to provide an answer.

"Sir!" the deck officer called again, sounding urgent. "I've cracked the encryption on that signal! Incoming transmission from a GAR special forces unit, long-range!"

Everett signaled for him to put the transmission on the holo-deck. Nothing happened. Right. The power was still out. A trooper helpfully tossed his bucket into the middle of the ring and activated its projection software.

A miniscule clone trooper appeared in holographic blue, hovering in the air. Despite the small size of the projector, Everett immediately noticed the difference in appearance between the projected soldier and the armored clones on the bridge, wearing their standard-issue Phase-II armor. This one was far bulkier than the average trooper, and the fierce Jaig Eyes painted on his mandalore-inspired helmet made him look positively lethal.

"Sir," the newcomer spoke brusquely. He identified himself at once: "This is RC-1398, Valor Squad. We're need of an immediate extraction. Can you assist?"

"Clone Commandos? What's your position, Valor?" Everett asked, motioning for a space chart to be brought.

"Right smack-dab in the middle of a Separatist fleet," the commando responded, a trace of grim humor in his voice. "We're running dark, but they're triangulating on our ship. We need an extraction pretty soon, or there's not going to be anything left to extract."

Everett shook his head wearily.

"I'll do what I can, commando, but we're having a bit of trouble ourselves. That fleet ambushed us as soon as we arrived in-system. Boarding parties took our main systems offline. We're dead in space, and they're coming right at us."

The clone commando turned around and seemed to be conferring with unseen companions. A moment later, he nodded and flashed someone a thumbs-up. He turned back to Everett.

"Tell you what, sir: we'll blow the mines if you agree to come pick us up after the fireworks. Then we can all run for the border."

The commando suddenly had Everett's full attention.

"Mines? What are you talking about, Commando—?"

"Vex, sir. This sector is a known Separatist ambush spot. We've been seeding it with pulse mines since the last transport got grabbed a few weeks ago. It was supposed to be a counter-ambush, but you showed up first. Sorry about that, sir."

"Pulse mines?" Everett felt the barest twinge of a smile tug at the corner of his mouth.

"Yes sir," Vex reported blithely. "And the Seps have been so helpfully ignorant to them up until—oh, right about now."

Everett glanced out the viewscreen. There seemed to be a sudden panic in the ranks of the distant Trade Federation battleships. Even from this distance, the fires from their maneuvering jets were visible as the ungainly vessels drunkenly tried to escape from the trap that they'd blundered into.

"How long can you give us?" Everett asked.

"Three minutes, tops," the commando explained apologetically. "They'll be totally out of commission during that time, however."

"Copy that. Wait one." Everett spun in his seat, his heart racing. All around him, the bridge crew looked ready for action, realizing what he intended before he even needed to explain himself. But he still gave the order. "Flight officer!"

"Sir!" the FO jumped to attention.

"I want a single gunship prepared. Stand by to scramble on my mark and perform SAR actions. Navigator—make ready for an emergency jump to hyperspace. Any vector will do."

His crew received their orders with gusto. They'd all heard the exchange. Everyone knew that this was it. To screw it up here was to face certain death. Nobody wanted to die in front of a droid firing squad. But they all wanted to get their commandos back, and they would willingly give their lives trying. It was something that all clones knew from decanting: you didn't leave a brother behind.

Everett turned back to the holo tank.

"You still with us, Valor Squad?"

"Yes sir!" came a tense voice.

The commando, Vex, appeared, holding on to an unseen handgrip as the hologram spun crazily around him. They were clearly dodging incoming fire. The droid ships had discovered them.

"We've got you! Blow your mines and stand by for extraction!" He knew he was asking for a lot of trust on their part. The pulse mines would knock out their electrical systems too. But there was no time for discussion. The commando turned and relayed the order to whoever was in the driver's seat.

The holo-feed suddenly bloomed into static. For a moment, Everett feared that they'd been hit, but a moment later, he felt an invisible rush of static crawl over his skin. It made his hairs stand on end.

"Look!" the trooper with the macrobinoculars shouted, momentarily forgetting his fear.

Out the viewscreen, the CIS warships rolled over slowly like bloated sea animals. Blue fire crawled their surfaces. For a moment, it looked like they might escape, but then—a white sun erupted as two of the large core ships collided. The other was overtaken by the explosion and went spinning away, venting atmosphere.

The troopers cheered their approval. That was one less problem to worry about. Now came the crucial part.

"Reboot all essential systems," Everett said quietly. There was no use in shouting. All that remained was to see whether or not his guess would pay off. Would the process that had taken control of his ship have survived the EMP event?

Waiting was agony. But then there was a hum from deep beneath the deck plates. The oxygen-starved ship was taking a breath. The lights turned back on and datascreens flared to life. It was their ship again: the remote takeover had been severed from its point of origin.

There was a chorus of whoops from the crew pit. Everett felt their elation as comlink chatter began to flood in from all sections of the ship. Working with the command crew, he began the task of making up for the time they'd lost in taking the fight to the enemy. Nab and his troopers were reporting the demise of the last pockets of Trandoshan resistance. Engineers were effecting emergency repairs to afflicted sections of the ship. Using a gantry, they'd managed to knock off the offending Trandoshan dropship of their own accord and seal the breach with particle shields.

But it was one report in particular that he was waiting for. Finally, it came:

"Hangar Bay reports successful return of SAR assets. Mission accomplished. All assets secure!"

And not a moment too soon. The remaining CIS core ship was showing signs of returning to life, powering up again and swinging back around. Everett gave the order to secure all hatches and make the jump to hyperspace—but not before accomplishing a little payback.

"Fire Control, warm up turbolaser batteries one through six," he ordered enthusiastically. "Let's give them something to think about."

His orders were duly carried out, and he had the satisfaction of observing as a full salvo of fat iridescent blue streams lanced out to impact silently with the unshielded trade federation ships. Then the horizon collapsed into streaking points of light and the ship jumped to Hyperspace.


	2. The Aftermath

The space between dimensions has a surreal beauty all its own: what the starfaring races call "hyperspace." It was as familiar to Everett as the smooth white halls of his home on Kamino. Lines of streaking stars mingled into a wash of softly undulating lights. The swirling cocoon bathed the _Aggressor's_ bridge in blue.

Everett sank into his stiff-backed chair with a sigh of appreciation. His gratefulness had little to do with the rigid materials used in the chair. It, like everything made by the Grand Army, was designed for cost-efficiency, not the comfort of clones. He was glad just to have made the jump to hyperspace, away from danger. And if he was honest with himself, it felt bloody good to take the weight off of his feet for a minute.

Around the bridge he could see shoulders loosening and troopers breathing a little easier at their stations. They felt it too. That was good, but it was counterproductive to their current goal. He grudgingly stood, and pushed his fatigue from his mind. He wanted to put some parsecs between them and the Separatist ambush before anyone let their guard down.

He called for a damage assessment. A trooper handed it off on a datapad. Everett dismissed him with a wave and powered the device on. The login code was his thumbprint—an irony in an army of outwardly identical clone soldiers. Wasn't it telling that some trick of genetics had sought to provide even such a slight difference as an individual thumbprint, as unique to each clone as to any human member of the galaxy?

But as Everett thumbed through the developing data, the furrows on his brow steadily deepened. The report was not favorable. Twenty-one clones were dead, and nearly twice that number were unaccounted for. The number of wounded was horrific. Slugthrowers made ugly holes. He wrinkled his nose distastefully. Republic-issue DC-15 blaster rifles were of a far higher quality, as were the clone troops that wielded them, as they'd proven today.

He scanned the serial numbers of the wounded grimly. Each clone would also have a 'name', a handle given them by their brothers or chosen by their own personal preference. Those weren't listed here. A clone's name had special meaning beyond the palpable. It was a sign of one's identity. Without it, what were you? Just a batch number and a face. A clone's name was his individuality. Even the Jedi sometimes failed to grasp that, seeing them all as identical automatons. Everett allowed himself a slight smile at that. So much the better. He, like most of his brothers, was adept at using that misconception to his advantage on occasion.

Everett searched the KIA roster for any batch numbers he recognized—they were at least useful for keeping tabs on individuals in an army where everyone looked the same. He didn't see any, but he'd have to do a more thorough investigation later. At least several troopers he would probably recommend for a medal. That was the Captain's sordid duty. He'd get to 'pin' the medals to their service records, by moving bits of data from one folder to another, while the dead men slept bereft of their armor, soon to be recycled into malleable plasteel. And in time, they'd launch forty or so durasteel coffins—some empty—into space, saying a few words about becoming one with the force. It was a typical GAR proceeding—cold, efficient, and all too brief for those men who'd laid down their lives in service to the Republic.

For the Republic? No, they hadn't, not really. Maybe on a vague, subliminal level. What did any clone fight for? Why, for his brothers of course. And they died for them too.

Everett looked down at his hands and realized that they were shaking. He closed them into fists. At least they'd been avenged. All of those Trandoshan barves were dead. Clone Intelligence would do a more thorough inspection later, counting berths aboard the clinging dropship and comparing them to the number of dead in an effort to make a positive body count and be sure that there were no stragglers still slinking around in the dark parts of the ship.

The damage to the _Aggressor_ was much less than he'd feared: mostly just widespread light damage from small-arms fire, the expected result of a close-quarters firefight aboard a battleship. There was still a ten-meter hole in the ship's dorsal superstructure, but that could be fixed. The only thing that struck him as problematic was a report from the engineering section that the hyperspace drive was acting up a little, producing power levels a hair below optimal output. He'd have to send a maintenance team down to inspect it.

All in all, they'd got away statistically unscathed. And they'd destroyed or crippled several CIS droid-control ships at three-to-one odds. Back on Coruscant, they would have called it a victory, a fine piece of military strategy. But he felt little elation. _Stang!_ Was victory really supposed to feel this way?

"'Caf, sir."

Everett blinked and realized that he'd been staring dead-eyed out at the churning maelstrom of hyperspace. A flimsiplast cup of fragrant stimcaf was being waved in front of his nose. The owner of the arm was his Executive Officer. Everett accepted the cup with gratitude.

"Thank you, Exo."

Exo looked uncomfortable. "Sir?"

"What is it?"

"Don't get too down on yourself," Exo said haltingly. "It's not your fault."

Everett stared at him sidelong. He'd always been impressed and a little unnerved by his second-in-command's ability to see right through to the heart of a problem, but now it was a little too much. And too soon. He felt the loss of those clones under his command personally. He always did.

"That's not for you to judge, Commander," he said as way of warning. But his admonishment had no teeth. He was really too tired to summon much emotion.

Exo deigned to ignore the slight, and pressed it further.

"Sir, if you go on moping about it, you're going to miss things. We have a whole ship to run and about six-thousand clones who _aren't_ dead who need a Captain to tell them what's going on," he said reasonably enough. But Everett wasn't in the mood.

"Watch yourself mister." A little bit of anger flushed the Captain's cheeks. He didn't feel the need to be second-guessed by any of his officers, not now. He realized that he really just wanted to be alone. To shower and sleep it all off, and wake up from it on the other end like a bad dream.

Exo carried on unperturbed. "Sir, we've got problems, okay?" He glanced around and lowered his voice. "I went with Nab down to the engineering level. We've got Scav droids. It's an infestation."

Everett jerked as though shot. All thought of loss was immediately driven from his mind and replaced with cold fear. Of all the Confederacy's mechanical horrors, Scav droids were perhaps the most diabolical. They were pitiless insect-like killing machines programmed only to rip the guts out of starships. A single unit could wreck a whole ship if introduced to the right place. They were dangerous in close combat, too.

"How bad is it?"

Exo pursed his lips. "It's bad, sir. Before we got there, they had at least twenty minutes to run amok. We think the EMP event got them all, though. Double-edged sword."

"What did they get at? Do we need damage control?"

"What didn't they get? Okay, sir, it's hard to tell. There's a lot of stuff in pieces. But we had to evac pretty quick. They ripped all the shielding off the sublight reactor core. That level is _hot_ , sir. No repairs are taking place until we get that core squared away."

Everett gave him his full attention. "Radiation? Is it survivable?"

Exo shook his head. "Too hot for biologicals, sir. That's us," he added unnecessarily. "Droids could go."

Everett stroked his chin. "I want to run that one past my Chief Engineer. Can we shut the cores off altogether?"

"Yes sir, we can. But that means no heat, power or sanitation for the next three months. We'd be limping along on solar power in zero gravity, in the dark, pissing in bags while we crawl back to Republic space. Once they're off, they're _off,_ sir. We'd need a full refit crew and an orbital shipyard to bring them back online."

Everett was doing the math. "We're practically dead in space if we don't have those engines. We're heading for a CIS blockade above Muunilinst. We won't be breaking through without them."

"That just about sums it up. They killed us thoroughly, sir."

"Without firing a shot," Everett mused. "Subtle. I smell Grievous."

"Sure as hell, sir."

Everett thought about it for a moment and decided he'd need some help. "Come."

He motioned Exo to follow. Leaving the helm in the hands of a clone crewman, they absconded to Everett's small wardroom just off the bridge. Within minutes, he'd assembled his entire command crew, sitting around a low durasteel table in various states of combat dress and wondering just what the hell was going on.

A trooper aide poured 'caf and was dismissed. Captain Everett spoke: "Thank you all for coming. I want your opinion on something."

"Sure, sir. I'm of the opinion that the Separatists picked on the wrong ship, and furthermore, I'm of the believe that we kicked their scaly _shebs_ today," the fire-control officer offered with a smirk.

There was a chorus of appreciative laughter from those assembled in the wardroom. Everett refused to be put off. He cracked a slight smile.

"Yes, I believe we have. You've all handled the crisis well today. I don't think I need to tell any of you that, but..." He clasped his hands under his nose and sighed. "But unfortunately, we're not done yet. We've just discovered a problem." He wet his lips, searching for the right words to convey the seriousness of the situation without starting a panic. "It looks like the Separatists' intent was to distract us while their boarding parties committed acts of sabotage. They damaged us in a way that will be difficult to repair."

"How?" they all wanted to know.

"Scav droids," the Chief Engineer spoke up. He'd already been briefed by his own staff. A ripple of anxiety passed through the small crowd. "Must've slipped in with the boarding party. Three months ago, there was a similar incident aboard the RAS _Prosecutor._ "

"That's classified, _ChEng,"_ Everett interjected quickly, wondering how the hell the story had gotten out. But sailors had their ways. He should have expected that this might come up.

"I know, sir. I just think it might be best if we were allowed to draw some comparisons," the Engineer said apologetically.

Everett thought about it. It was true that sharing knowledge gleaned from the _Prosecutor_ incident could fire the imaginations of his staff, and he didn't want to be seen as keeping secrets from them. And it was hardly private knowledge that something had happened to her. Rumors abounded—everything from an astronav error leading to a collision with a black hole to flesh-eating aliens. It might be good to set the record straight.

"Very well. Go ahead, Chief."

The clone officer nodded his thanks and continued. "Republic Intel is convinced that the Separatists have some kind of working alliance with the Trandoshans. They pulled the same move on the _Prosecutor_ a while back with more success. Boarders hit the ship and disabled it, then the CIS swoops in and tries to take her away."

There were some snorts of derision at the mention of Republic intelligence, but also nods of understanding.

"I heard it was Delta Squad who sorted that whole mess out."

Heads turned. It was Lieutenant Nab, leaning against the bulkhead by the door. He was nodding his head thoughtfully. Nobody had seen him come in. Though technically an officer, he was from the wrong branch; not really supposed to be present at a Navy officer's wardroom meeting. But Everett wanted him there—his perspective as an infantry clone would be useful. And he'd seen the damage to the reactor level personally.

He quickly moved to set the precedent. "You heard right. Last time, they took too long to claim their prize. This time, they wanted to make the turnover faster. Lessons learned from the Prosecutor, no doubt."

"History repeats itself: Commandos to the rescue again." Nab cocked his head. "We've got a commando squad aboard now, don't we? I'd sure like to meet them." He seemed almost to be talking to himself.

"Let's try to get back on topic," Everett said quietly. "Chief?"

"It's not the reactor that's a problem," the chief engineer said. "It's the core shielding. It's been, ah... _removed."_

"What do you mean, 'removed'?" the flight officer asked. "I've seen those things on transport shuttles. You need a loader droid and a gantry crane to service that compartment. How did some jumped-up little buzz droid get at it?"

"I mean it's been removed," the Engineer grumbled. "I have no idea how. Maybe they cut it off with plasma torches. It's a durasteel plate, about this big, and about six inches thick" he explained, pantomiming a rectangle about the width of his arm span. "It weighs about a ton. Right now it's lying on the deck sixteen inches from an exposed hypermatter core that is presently giving out lethal doses of radiation like firecrackers at a Wookiee Life-Day festival." Everyone looked a little nervous after that.

"So let's send a droid to bolt it back on?" the portside gunnery officer suggested. "We've got loaders in the magazine that could do it."

The engineer's helmet spun around so fast that Everett though the clone's head might snap off.

"Are you out of your mind?" he frothed. "You want to break a warship? That's how you break a warship! You'd have to be out of your mind to even _think_ about putting a droid in there!"

"So what do we do about it? Send in the troopers?" the gunner's mate who was sitting in the corner taking shorthand, piped up, sticking up for his branch.

Until now, Exo had been standing with his hands clasped behind his back, silently supporting his Captain. His face may well have been cut from stone as he glared at the unruly NCO.

"You're out of line, trooper," the heavyset clone said sharply.

Silence met his words. The gunner looked around incredulously, his mouth flopping open and shut like a scalefish. Amazingly, he persisted. "Sir, you can't be serious! How is that ethical?"

"We're not going to be ordering clones to their deaths, trooper," Everett said, sitting a little straighter. "What's your name?"

"Sir!" the gunner mumbled, drawing himself up into a half-hearted posture of seated attention. "CT-3287—."

"Not your number, trooper. Your _name,_ " Everett growled. You could have heard a pin drop in the wardroom. The other officers sat in stony silence. The old man was flexing a little, they thought. _Damn._

"I'm called Salvo, sir."

"Thank you Salvo. Get out."

With a dark expression, the clone called Salvo stood and saluted. He turned on his heel and stalked out of the wardroom. It seemed somehow that the air cleared a little when he was gone.

Everett was quiet for a count of ten seconds before he spoke again. He did not enjoy taking the role of disciplinarian. But he needed to sell this, and even a single voice of dissent in the room might be enough to derail it.

"Nobody is going to their death." He lifted his gaze to a clone who had just come in to the room. "Flight surgeon, if you will?"

A veteran clone medic in red-striped armor rose from his place and favored the gathering with a nod. He'd been summoned from a surgery just for this meeting. He was a personal friend of Captain Everett, a reliable clone who didn't shy from the battlefield anymore than the operating theater. His men collectively called him 'Doc', and he held to a rigorous standard of medical professionalism. He made his presentation as quickly and precisely as if he were giving a lecture to clone medical cadets.

"Thank you, Captain. The majority of the radioactive material is presently concentrated around the reactor core itself. The odds of fatal radiation poisoning to a trooper in environment gear are very low from projected short-term exposure," he explained, reading from his datapad. "But I'll want to start bacta therapy right away once they've finished. That way, I think we can mitigate the hazard of radiation-induced sickness. There should be no serious ill-effects."

"Thank you, Doc." Everett tried to project confidence that he didn't exactly feel. "Everyone who partakes in this mission will go with full knowledge of the risks. We need to get on top of this before it gets out of hand." He fixed the assembly with an unyielding stare. "So now I'm asking for volunteers." Before anyone could protest, Everett picked up a trooper helmet from the mezzanine. "I'll be the first."

"Sir..." Exo began, but Everett cut him short.

"Exo, I won't ask anyone to go where I won't."

"Never, sir," Exo said apologetically. He picked up a helmet too. "I just want you to know that I'll be right behind you."

Everett nodded appreciatively. It was just as they'd rehearsed. "Thank you, Commander. Any others?"

A low murmur swept through the small crowd of assembled clone officers. Many refused to meet his eyes.

Finally, the navigator chuckled grimly. "Fierfek, this is crazy. Count me in, I guess."

Everett smiled at the man. "Excellent. What's your name, trooper?"

"I go by 'Gator, sir." The trooper looked embarrassed to be on the receiving end of the attention. He fidgeted with the lip of his helmet that he held on his lap.

"Any others? Come on people! You're not going to live forever! We're clones!"

This brought an uneasy chuckle. It was well known that all clones were aging at twice the normal human rate. There were a few other murmurs of assent, then Lieutenant Nab, who for the most part had remained silent through the discussion raised his hand.

"Sir? I just had a thought."

* * *

The commandos of Valor squad were accustomed to receiving funny looks. In their bulky gray Katarn armor, they looked more like walking mechanized units than infantry. There was no need to call for a hole. Clone troopers parted automatically before them.

The four-man commando squad trudged through the maze of corridors, following the small maps built-in to their HUDs. Hungry, ornery, tired and deprived of their weapons, they had nothing to go on but a cryptic order from the bridge to head down to engineering for a hazmat op.

Clone troopers eyed them as they passed: some with curiosity, others with open awe. Clone Commandos were a rare sight. Not all of the stares were friendly, though. Their advanced equipment and status as an elite unit of the Grand Army tended to elicit jealousy from rank-and-file infantry.

"Feels nice to be loved, doesn't it?" RC-1042, 'Lew', said, voicing all of their thoughts over the private channel afforded them by their helmets.

"Can it, forty-two," Iceman said irritably, fulfilling his duty as the squad's peevish second-in-command.

Lew inclined his leopard-spotted helmet toward RC-1048, the squad's taciturn sniper and his frequent co-conspirator. "Hey, Tapper. Did you hear that?"

The marksman played along, taking his part in the game that had been ongoing since they'd been decanted together. "No, nothing. Maybe some com interference?"

Lew shrugged. "Hey, Iceman, did you hear anything?"

RC-1100 rounded on him with irritation. "Please, for the love of the force—just _shut up_!"

Vex decided it was time to step in. Banter had its place, but he needed his squad to get their heads in the right place. They'd all just come off of a _very_ long op, and now his body was screaming for some R&R and a hot shower. The commandos were tired, hungry and irritable. But they didn't get to pick and choose.

"That's enough. All of you." As the squad leader, it was his job to take the hard line sometimes. They knew it, and he knew it. They also knew that he would make good on his promise to make an example of any commando who ground his gears for too long.

The others lapsed into stung silence. All was quiet for a few seconds except for the lock-step march of their armored boots. Tapper could see Lew fidgeting. He could tell that the man wanted to ask a question.

 _"Don't you do it,"_ he communicated with a discrete hand signal. Lew gestured back shook his head violently. But he could tell that it was already a lost cause.

Lew raised his hand like a clone cadet in his Level 3 introductory courses. Tapper sensed Vex's ire and winced. But Lew went ahead.

"Sir, I have a question."

Vex didn't break step. "Take it up the chain, commando."

Tapper could sense Lew's grin behind his helmet. The commando didn't miss a beat.

"RC-1100, I have a question for RC-1398."

Iceman hissed a sigh through clenched teeth.

"Sir, RC-1042 has a—"

Vex wheeled around and jabbed a finger into Lew's chest armor plate. His voice was all Jango Fett; low, hard and menacing.

"Commando, you're walking a very fine line right now." He relaxed his posture somewhat, realizing that troopers were staring, though they weren't privy to the conversation. "You're a good soldier and a damn good pilot. But you need to pull it together. I know you're tired, but there are a lot of clone lives on the line right now, and I need you focused."

"Tired?" Lew muttered. "Stang, sir, I'm _exhausted._ What are we doing here, anyway?"

The others watched the discussion with veiled interest. As usual, Lew spoke for everyone, though with a great deal less tact than was probably appropriate.

"We're doing our _job,_ commando. Now get back in line." Lew swallowed heavily. Vex could tell he was fighting back an angry retort. He didn't care. "Say the words."

Lew looked him in the eye—or where his eyes would have been, had he not been wearing a helmet. They were visible only as a ghostly blue glow.

"Aye aye, sir," he bit out.

Vex patted him on the shoulder plate. "There's a good lad. Now, what's your question?"

Lew took a deep breath before responding. "Sir? Why us? Why are we doing this? We're not _engineers_. We're not even trained for this sort of thing!"

Vex replied without thinking. "You're Special Forces. This is as special an operation as they come. If you don't like it, you can join the tankers."

"Yeah, and our armor is rated to protect against hard vacuum. I guess they figure it's thick enough to shield us from radiation as well," Iceman said ironically.

"It is," Tapper confirmed. He had an embarrassing tendency to take manufacturers' guarantees at face value. "It is, isn't it?"

"Of course." Vex clapped him on the back, in a fatherly gesture that the other commandos found very telling. _Oh great,_ they thought.

Vex seemed to sense their skepticism. They could hear him grinding his teeth together, a sure sign of irritation. He pumped his arm angrily. "Well, what are you standing around for, Valor? Let's go!"

Lew glanced back at the troopers milling around in the hallway. They'd been watching the exchange.

"What are you looking at?" he protested. "Scram!"

The troopers needed no further encouragement from the 300-pound commando, who was pissed off and looked very, very dangerous, even without his weapon. They made themselves scarce, wondering what that had been all about. Besides, they had a tedious escape pod drill to undertake, in the wake of a shipboard battle, no less.

The commandos arrived at their destination eight minutes later, thoroughly turned-around in the maze of identical hallways. A clone trooper engineer in grimy red coveralls met them and led them to an out-of-the-way locker room where he briefly instructed them on what they were expected to do.

"Oh _kark_ me," Iceman muttered. Even the normally disposed Tapper seemed a little pale.

"Sir, do we really have to?" Lew asked hopefully.

Vex had his own misgivings, but he couldn't voice them. His squad needed a solid example to follow. He stepped up to the locker room bench and ejected his vibroblade gauntlet, placing it on the flat surface.

"Okay commandos. Anything metallic comes _off._ Anything that might attract static stays here."

The commandos complied, stripping their duraplast armor of anything that fit the bill. The engineer passed out static-nullifying bracelets. Iceman picked one up and eyed it dubiously.

"These are going to keep us from getting blown up?"

"No, but they should keep you grounded in the event of a runaway ionization event," the trooper said without much optimism.

"Great." Iceman looked thoroughly unhappy.

"Lew, _dee-cee."_ Tapper pointed to the blaster pistol adhered to the small of the other commando's back.

"Thanks, forty-eight," Lew acknowledged, peeling the blaster off.

"Lew, that's got to go back to the armory," Vex said disapprovingly.

"Sure thing, Sarge," Lew said with false enthusiasm. "Let's take on the scav droids lurking around here with our fists. That'll really surprise them."

Vex decided not to press the issue. Lew's insubordination could be explained away as extreme fatigue. He'd just spent a straight week in the cramped pilot's chair of a Republic TIV, and now here they were, saved from the frying pan and being asked to play amateur EOD technician with enough unstable hypermatter to blow the ship in half.

"We all ready?"

He got a chorus of unenthusiastic affirmatives. His squad stood around about as naked as they could get without removing armor plates, but they still looked _mean_. He pitied any Trandoshan that might still be skulking about down here.

"Alright Valor squad, follow me."

They filed out of the locker room and crossed the corridor to a heavily riveted blast door across the hall. They stacked up a little nervously, Vex saw. He motioned at them to tighten it up. This was no time for sloppy soldiering. Vex would have likened the maneuver to a door breach, except the enemy here was invisible, unfiltered radiation. Time to see if commando armor was as good as it was made out to be.

He thumbed the button to open the hatch, and it slid aside with a pneumatic hiss. The radiometer in his helmet jumped.

"Whoa," Iceman breathed.

"Keep it locked, commandos," Vex ordered. "We're okay. Lots of breakable stuff in here, so move _carefully._ And watch out for scav droids."

The commandos moved single-file, nervously ducking under strands of hanging cables. The room was a mess of machinery and black rubber tubing covered with blinking instruments for purposes that the commandos could only guess at. It looked like the inside of a ruptured Strill. Lew made the connection gleefully.

"That's disgusting," Iceman muttered, carefully stepping over an energized cable.

"There's the reactor core," Vex noted unnecessarily. It was like staring at an arc welder. Cornea-frying light blasted out of a long coffin-shaped housing. The object inside shone like the sun itself. Not a single shadow could be seen in the presence of the scouring illumination. The commandos' visors polarized automatically to save their vision.

"That must be the shield housing." Tapper pointed with his finger. A concave piece of durasteel as thick as his wrist lay abandoned on the ground, bathed in the eerie light. Next to it lay the insect-like husk of a scav droid, overcome by the unshielded EMP effect given off by the very treasure it had laboured to uncover. It was still twitching like a massive bug. Lew crushed its processor core under his armored boot.

"Damn droids."

Vex had to agree. There was no telling what kind of destruction a rogue scav droid could wreak, left to its own devices in a room as sensitive as the reactor chamber.

"Come on, let's shift this thing," he ordered. He bent down to take hold of the heavy piece of metal. The other commandos followed his lead. As he leaned over the glowing core, the number of rads hitting his suit doubled again. He discretely checked his suit seals. They were holding. Summoning his willpower, he pushed the radiation from his mind.

"Come on— _lift!"_

Four commandos strained in tandem, working their enhanced muscles to the limit as they wrestled the cover into place. They got it up and worked it into its socket. The radiation alarms in their helmet fell abruptly silent.

Lew straightened up and made a show of dusting himself off. "Well, Valor Squad saves the day again. I hope they give us a medal." He thought a moment. "Make that two medals. One for now, and one for earlier."

"Uh, I'm getting a little interference on my visor here, Valor lead," Iceman said uncomfortably. He shook his head as if to clear it. "Wait, it's gone."

Vex paused to scan their surroundings. He didn't see anything, but that didn't mean there _wasn't_ anything.

"Radiometer looks okay. Could be some rogue ionization."

"Yeah," Iceman said. He looked unconvinced. "Stang, there it is again."

A little line of static crawled across Vex's visor. "I'm getting it too." He noticed a shadow moving out of the corner of his eye. It looked like... "Valor!" he yelled. "Heads up! Scav droid coming in!"

The scav droid dropped down from the ceiling above where it had been hiding amidst some trailing coolant lines. It landed on Tapper's back and dug in with its scalpel-sharp manipulators, raising a screaming diamontium-tipped drill to bore down on the commando's helmet.

" _Fierfek!_ Get it off!" the commando screamed. He fought to dislodge it, but it clung like an enraged animal.

"Hold still, Tapper!" Lew shouted, grabbing the whirling droid with both hands. It turned on him, trying to drill through his visor in turn. "Ouch! Damn it!"

Luckily, Vex was standing close enough to seize a writhing manipulator leg as it flashed past, and he used its leverage to tear the abomination loose from his commando and threw it to the floor. After that, it was a flood of stomping and kicking with armored boots until the thing finally stopped moving.

"Well," Lew panted, when it was all over. "We sure showed it."

"Valor!" Iceman shouted. "Get away from that thing! They've got detonite self-destruct charges!"

The warning came too late. The scav droid exploded into a million pieces as its self-destruct sequence activated. Vex winced as he felt shrapnel rake his thigh with razor-sharp talons. But that wasn't the worst of it. Something in the engine room had been hit. The air was suddenly full of electrically-charged steam. Blue lightning crackled everywhere. The radiation meter in his helmet leapt to the redline. Alarms were going nuts.

"Valor squad, evacuate now!" He tripped over something and grabbed for it. It could have been a fallen commando. He couldn't see through the billowing steam. He switched visor modes to EM frequency, but it didn't help much. Static was crawling everywhere. He realized he was holding a large hydrospanner. Cursing, he threw it away.

Stumbling blind, he found another commando more by luck than anything and grabbed his shoulder. Behind him, he felt someone else do the same. They stumbled out of the radioactive steam, one after the other like a twisted game of Blind Jedi.

They managed to make it out of the room. Vex did a head count and was relieved to see all four commandos accounted for. But the ambient radiation levels were still off the chart. Together, they managed to seal the door, but it hardly made a difference. Something had blown, and badly. He didn't know the extent of it yet, but he knew something was very, very wrong.

* * *

Everett was back on the bridge, monitoring Valor Squad's progress with an attentive eye. He felt a subtle change come over the ship almost before the computer suite registered it. Out the window, the roiling landscape of hyperspace dissolved into real-time once more with a sickening lurch. He felt it in his blood that something had gone badly awry. Reports started flooding in of a critical failure in the reactor room. A new alarm sounded, drowning out the rest, accompanied by flashing amber lights.

 _"Respirators!"_ a clone officer screamed. Recessed supply caches on the wall automatically slid open, giving access to a forest of individually-wrapped respirator masks.

It wasn't quite a mad scramble to the supply lockers. Some order prevailed, though the air was decidedly tense as clones queued up to don their respirator masks. Though some troopers on the bridge were wearing sealed armor, most were not. Those that were tried to assist the others, but generally just ended up getting in the way. Then they stood around, almost guiltily, thanking the force for the full-body environment suits under their armor.

Everett took his place in line with the rest. He didn't know what had happened yet, though—he suspected—but that could wait until he had all of his crew in masks. He took the green flimsiplast package and tore it open, removing the lifesaving equipment inside. He fitted the easy-access straps to his head and tightened them down. Like every piece of equipment in the Grand Army, these masks were jokingly referred to as one-size-fits-all, and he was grateful to see that the axiom held.

He was admittedly relieved when he felt the cool trace of oxygen drift over his lips. He made a point of checking each officer in turn to ensure a good seal, and they did likewise, looking out for each other.

"You okay sir?" It was Exo, sounding muffled through his own mask.

Everett nodded. He went looking for someone who seemed to have an idea of what was going on. He found the _Agressor's_ Chief Engineer still sitting at his station, his full-face helmet affording him some autonomy as he worked his instruments.

He looked up at Everett's presence and launched into an explanation without being prompted, speaking in clipped punctuation-less sentences.

"We're cooked, sir! Explosion in the reactor room! Radiation jumping to critical levels! Levels three through five-ex affected. Seals are not holding. Must be blast damage. We're going to be in trouble!"

Everett's eyes narrowed over the ridge of his mask.

"Explain."

"Near as I can tell, we've had a fatal explosion in the hyperdrive room. The core is in total meltdown, runaway fission process. Radioactive hypermatter-infused vapour is spreading through all levels of the ship."

It took Everett less than a second to decide on a course of action. Clone Captains were programmed with some degree of loyalty to their starships, but not so much that it overshadowed common sense. The _Agressor_ had become a death trap. The Separatists had scored the kill anyway—it had only been delayed. He raised his voice above the din.

"Exo! Give the order! We're abandoning ship!"

"Affirmative!" the clone officer called back. He punched the right code into the master control and the abandon ship alarm echoed throughout the entire ship. The entire crew was dropping whatever they were doing and sprinting to the lifeboats.

"Standby lifeboats," the deck officer reported, looking nervous himself. "Sir, where should we send them?"

"Sir!" It was the clone called Gator, still seated calmly at his navigation console, despite the chaos around him. Everett ran up to look over the man's shoulder. Gator acknowledged him briskly. "I have a possible crash destination for the lifeboats. There's a planet on our doorstep, thirteen-thousand clicks from us. See that?" He indicated a small blue marble on his screen with his stylus. "Easily within range of our lifeboats. Scanners say it's habitable. I think it's out best bet, sir."

Everett took in the data at a glance. Temperate, moderate size, no apparent settlements, at least by the standards of civilised worlds. Probably uninhabited. It looked like prime real-estate for the mass orbital insertion of over six-thousand clone personnel.

"Looks like a vacation paradise," he agreed. "Thank the force. Mark it. Do we have a name for it in the database?"

Gator shook his head. "Sorry. Nothing but a gravitational stamp on the galactic hyperchart."

"Understandable. This is the outer rim. Designate as planet 'Aurek' and launch the boats." He frowned at the small toylike world on the tiny display. "Try to set us down more or less on that big green space. Looks level enough. Probably prairie land." _Or a continental ocean,_ both clones thought. The quality of the long-range scanners left a lot to be desired. "Send a distress call to the Republic. Then grab your gear and hit the pods."

"Yes sir!"

Everett clapped him on the back. "Good work trooper." He turned to his remaining bridge crew, all the essential personnel. It made him proud to see that they stayed at their stations, awaiting his order to depart. But now it was time to leave. Something in his gut was telling him that the air was rapidly growing toxic, despite the boon of his respirator.

"Okay people! Time to go!"

Obediently, the last few troopers and officers leapt to their feet and filed off of the bridge. Under the worst of circumstances, the entire command bridge could be fired off as an impromptu escape pod, but Everett still hoped to return to his command one day. There was a secondary pod of Mer-Sonn construction adjacent to the bridge. They made for that and clambered through the low, spherical hatch, twelve in all.

Everett was tempted to strap into the command chair himself, but there was a trooper pilot already at his station, looking urgent in his gold-flashed armor.

"Come on, lads!" he roared over his shoulder. "It's getting hot in here!"

The bridge crew strapped themselves in to the bulky crash seats with some apprehension. And not a moment too soon. The second the last clone made contact with his seat, the pilot slapped the separation control and they were away with a lurch.

The temperature in the lifeboat spiked sharply as the small thrusters kicked in to rocket the small craft away from the stricken ship. Everett was suddenly aware of being lost in space among a crazy cloud of other escape pods. Their shadows flashed past the small viewscreen like startled fish. And in the distance, the bright curve of the planet grew...

He never saw the pod that collided with them. One moment he was drumming his feet on the floor, watching over the pilot's shoulder, and the next, he was jerked sideways in his chair as atmosphere blasted past through an ever-widening gap. There was nothing he could do. The roar of venting air died to a muffled whisper. Clones were shouting, but he heard nothing. The pilot was gone, vanished through a star-strewn gap in the floor wide enough to consume a man without letting him touch either side.

The air grew very thin and cold. It was all he could do just to hang on to his crash chair and suck oxygen through his mask, which he had thankfully not removed. All the same, it wasn't enough. He could feel his vision blurring and his head was pounding with a sudden, severe headache that threatened to bring him to unconsciousness.

 _Explosive decompression,_ he thought. _This is how I die._

The moisture on his eyelids was turning to ice. He thought he could see white-armored figures straining on something in his peripheral vision. It was too late. He gave in and lost the battle for consciousness.

Just before everything went black; it seemed to him that he was perceived by something other than himself—a powerful presence—powerful but not evil. It seemed to address him, but he could not understand the words. Or were they words at all—not language, but some manner of spoken song? The roaring blackness grew softer in his ears, and he was grateful. It seemed to soften into gray, like a coming dawn. And he was not afraid.


End file.
